Once an actual recall has been issued on a product, it becomes
illegal to sell that product anywhere in the US,
even 2nd hand at a yard sale.
There is currently a war on products containing magnets. It is
semi-justified. In homes where there are young children that put things in their mouths, one magnet won't do any harm, but 2 can kill a child. But the CPSC harassment of companies and their magnet containing products is unevenly applied. Some companies and product categories get hit while others do not. Toy companies of course get hit more often, while manufacturers of refrigerator magnets rarely get hit. And some of those magnets are more toy-like than the actual toys that are being recalled.
This is from a line of refrigerator magnets that is still in production and still available in many stores, and has
never been the issue of a recall:
Remember Buckyballs? They Are Now GoneThere is a whole line of them, many different kitchen appliances. While they make really cute fridge magnets, they are the perfect size for a child's doll house, and I can remember buying the entire line for my daughter's doll house.
If you are going to pressure companies to recall products containing magnets, especially toys, then it needs to be applied evenly, with fridge magnets like these also being recalled.
But I think the issue I have with the whole idea of recalling everything that has a magnet in it is that in places where there are no young children that put things in their mouths, the magnets pose no danger at all. The pressure to recall both Bucky Balls and Zen magnets is very unfair to those companies and their customers that have no young children at all. The CPSC wants to make it illegal for a teenager that's an only child to have a set of these, wants to make it illegal for a childless adult to have a set, wants to make it illegal for a CEO to have a set on the desk in his office.
While I will agree with a warning label to alert parents of young children of the dangers of magnets, I don't agree with a recall to remove the product from the market and out of the homes of existing owners, by forcing the companies to buy back at full retail price,
every set they have sold since the beginning of time.
And that's what a CPSC mandated recall does. It forces companies to pay out more than they made from the products they sold, and if the company is a small one, with a single product, not only will it put them out of business due to no longer having something to sell, it can bankrupt them by forcing them to liquidate all their assets to cover the costs of the recall. They won't even have the chance to stay in business by coming out with another product.
Now, I am not against all recalls. Exploding laptop batteries
need to be recalled, as well as other unsafe products. But products that are only unsafe when the consumer doesn't exercise common sense shouldn't be recalled. Maybe a warning label should be required on a lot of those products, but not a full out recall to banish every trace of the product from the country and bankrupt the companies that made them.
